Thursday, October 04, 2012

Alan Jones’ Apology, with a few obvious corrections for grammar and style

As a broadcaster, I often find myself in situations where,
unfortunately, I express a certain thought or idea poorly, or find my
words taken out of context. Indeed, that is what happened this weekend.
Upon reviewing the impromptu remarks I made Sunday afternoon, I can now
see that I used the wrong words in the wrong way. I would
now like to set the record straight with the Australian people and
clear up some confusion about what it was I intended to convey.

You
see, what I said was that Julia Gillard’s father died of shame because
his daughter told lies every time she stood for parliament. But what I
meant to say was, “I am a worthless, moronic sack of shit and an utterly
irredeemable human being who needs to shut up and go away forever.”

There are days when you just have to concede, man up and say you got it
wrong. And in this instance these are remarks which I shouldn't have
made. It is clear to me now that I did not choose my words with care
and did not get across the point I was trying to convey. In hindsight, I
guess instead of using the words “died of shame,” I should have used
the words “I am an unforgivable, unrepentant, and unconscionable
subhuman dickhead.” Or better yet, “I am an evil, fucked-up man who
should never have been allowed on the public airwaves, and anyone who
would listen to me me is probably a pretty big fucking dumbshit, too.”
See how much more sense that makes? It’s amazing how a few key word
changes can totally alter the meaning of a statement.

Because, of
course, it’s all about context. And yes, when you take what I said out
of context, I can see how it might sound like I’m claiming that Julia
Gillard should be drowned in a chaff bag. This is, I assure you, not
what I was trying to express at all. Such is the age we live in that one
little sentence excerpted in a news report can come back to haunt a
person in a pretty big hurry. But if you actually go back and look at
the remarks closely, you’ll see that what I was actually trying to
convey in my statement was that (1) I am a big fucking idiot, (2) I am a nauseating slug of a human being who doesn’t deserve to live, and (3) I am essentially everything that’s wrong with this country and with humanity in general.

Honestly, that’s all I was trying to get across there. It was a simple misunderstanding, really.
It’s funny, because, in my head, I remember thinking very vividly, “I,
Alan Jones, am a bigoted jackass who probably should not be alive, let
alone on the airwaves. People need to know what a terrible person I
am so they will then remember to punch me in the face anytime they get
the chance.” But when I opened my mouth and tried to articulate that
thought, somehow I blurted out the thing about Julia Gillard instead of
just saying, in plain English, that I am awful, just purely and
incontrovertibly awful.

Frankly, it’s hard not to make a mistake
from time to time when you’re in the public eye as much as I am. I am
constantly having to speak my mind in a public forum, and sometimes,
when all I’m trying to say is something simple and inarguable, like,
“Sweet Jesus, I am the worst person who has ever lived,” I wind up
saying something completely different. It’s frustrating, really. Because
I have a lot of very pertinent and very well-thought out things to say
about how somebody should just smack me in the head with a goddamned
cricket bat because of how brainless and insensitive I am, but instead
my words just come out all jumbled.

I guess I just have a habit of
putting my foot in my mouth! And for being the very worst that Western
Civilization has to offer!

So let me take this opportunity to be
very specific about what I meant when speaking to the Liberal Club,
which was this: I am not a competent or respectable broadcaster; I am,
essentially, a subhuman monster of a prick, a prick as profoundly
insensitive as he is monumentally unintelligent in every respect;
somebody should apply dozens of layers of duct tape to my mouth every
morning so that words are not able to exit my large, dumb, misogynist,
imbecilic mouth at any point; I make the planet worse; I don’t know jackshit about any of the topics I spoke about in that interview, or about
any topics at all, really; I should apologize every day to the women of
the world, but doing so would most likely be an exercise in futility
given my rock-bottom intellect and my complete and utter lack of human
decency; I am, in no uncertain terms, not even worth the time it took
you to read this. That’s what I meant to say. Sorry for the confusion.